Neck Training - Weird But Useful

biggerhealthier

May 12

Written By Adam Fisher

Takeaway Points:

The neck is an often overlooked area of training - and largely, this is justified because there’s minimal reason to train it in many sports.
However, if you participate in any sport which involves heavy contact, or if you want to maximize the appearance of muscularity, there are still ways that neck training can be useful.
I cover my recommendations and experience with this weird training method.

Alright, so I’ve finally decided to sit down and write a post about neck-focused training.

I put it off for so long, in part because the main form of training your neck (neck curls and reverse neck curls) looks, well, really weird. The easiest way to load up such an exercise is a head harness, and the second easiest way is to put a towel on your head and a weight plate on top, neither of which look very fun. You can also do such an exercise with a partner nearby to provide resistance by pushing down on your head, but I’ve never been much into having a training partner.

Then there’s the fact that this kind of training REALLY isn’t important for most people. You could probably go your entire lifting career without worrying about it, and you’d be fine. But, there are still a couple of valid reasons why neck training would be beneficial, so I might as well cover them.

Aesthetics

I overlooked this one for a long time, simply because I never really considered the value of neck training for size. However, the science does validate that you can develop muscle mass around the neck and jaw in response to typical neck focused training, and many bodybuilders prefer the look of having built some excess muscle around the neck and upper traps. This muscle can give the impression of a sort of “fuller” or “wider” neck even with just a little bit of growth, which tends to contribute to the impressively big look that most bodybuilders are going for.

You likely don’t even need to train the muscles much to get this effect either, with just a couple short training sessions consisting of 3 sets each week - so for people who are looking to absolutely maximize their bigness, it’s probably worth it.

I was recently turned on to this kind of training by Jeff Nippard’s videos on the topic, which I highly recommend:

Injury Risk

In any sport that can potentially involve trauma to the head, neck-focused training can help to protect you against surprise external forces. If you strengthen the muscles of the neck, they will be more active to cushion the head, reducing whiplash and risk of injury.

Naturally, this is most relevant for high contact sports. Boxing and other martial arts will certainly require a great deal of strength in the musculature of the neck, simply to keep you from getting hurt too much by the demands of the sport. Other field sports with high degrees of contact (American football, for example) can also involve sudden impact, and benefit from training for the neck musculature.

Until recently, basically the only time I had ever actually seen someone do neck curls, was when I was working alongside a strength coach who primarily worked with American football athletes. Aside from that, in over a decade in the gym, I’ve literally never seen anyone else training neck-focused exercises - that should say a lot about how niche of an exercise this is!

This is also the reason I got into neck training - while I like the idea of having more impressive upper trap development, I have always had a bit of an issue with soreness in my upper back due to scoliosis of my spine. This has been further a problem with the switch to calisthenics/gymnastics focused training, which features a lot more work for my shoulders and scapular stabilizers - as a result, my shoulders and traps have started to bug me a bit as well, and this has occasionally forced me to take deloads in my training to let my shoulders recover.

I’ve definitely found that regular neck training has helped with these nagging issues, and helped a ton with clearing up the pain and discomfort I got from heavy overhead training. It definitely feels weird to get used to, but I’m also starting to enjoy it. On days that my neck is feeling a bit sore or pained due to all the overhead work I’m doing, I can pop the neck harness on, and do a couple sets, and often this completely clears it up in just a few minutes.

How To Train Neck

While the neck curl, reverse neck curl, and side to side neck curl are the primary exercises that actually focus directly on the neck, many other exercises do train the neck as well - basically, any kind of heavy rowing, shrugs, lateral raises, overhead presses, and even deadlifts and holds like farmer’s carries, can affect the traps and upper back to a certain extent. If you’ve got enough of these exercises in your workouts already, you may not need much more.

However, if, like me, you need a bit of neck training to help balance out the rest of your training, or if you specifically need to focus on neck for the injury prevention element of it (or simply want to develop a stronger neck!) then neck curls and their variations are a good fit for you. The best option is to simply purchase a neck harness, but if you don’t have one available, you can also do plate loaded or partner assisted variations. You can pick up a neck harness pretty cheaply, however, so it’s usually not too much of an issue.

Reps in all major directions help to train the musculature all the way around in a balanced fashion, and since gravity only pushes in one direction, that means you’ll want to rotate your body during the process. As a result, lying down on a bench with your head hanging off of it, is typically the easiest way to set this up - lying on your belly, lying on your back, and lying on each side.

In terms of reps, sets, and frequency, I find the neck musculature to follow a lot of the same rules that I apply to other smaller muscle groups - slower sets, avoiding much cheating, aiming for as full of a range of motion as possible, and not going super high on reps if it means compromising form or range of motion. You can potentially go surprisingly heavy on this exercise, but I still recommend playing it careful until you get used to the exercise.

You don’t need to do a ton of training for this exercise, since it’s mainly a supplemental accessory exercise to help cover injury risk, especially if you do a lot of rowing exercises with a lot of upper trap involvement to begin with. Just 1-2 training sessions of 3 sets a week (again, covering all directions) won’t take up a ton of time, and is likely more than enough.

Closing Thoughts

Neck training certainly isn’t for everyone. I still think it has very limited application, and like I mentioned above, I’ve only seen one person in over a decade in the gym who actually did any of these exercises regularly. However, it can definitely be a useful supplement to your additional training, especially if, like me, your neck gets a bit cranky from lots of overhead exercises

About Adam Fisher

Adam is an experienced fitness coach and blogger who's been blogging and coaching since 2012, and lifting since 2006. He's written for numerous major health publications, including Personal Trainer Development Center, T-Nation, Bodybuilding.com, Fitocracy, and Juggernaut Training Systems.

During that time he has coached hundreds of individuals of all levels of fitness, including competitive powerlifters and older exercisers regaining the strength to walk up a flight of stairs. His own training revolves around bodybuilding and powerlifting, in which he’s competed.

Adam writes about fitness, health, science, philosophy, personal finance, self-improvement, productivity, the good life, and everything else that interests him. When he's not writing or lifting, he's usually hanging out with his cats or feeding his video game addiction.

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